


In Which Tony Is Rightfully Concerned

by mauvera



Series: In other news: the avengers don't know what a Spidey Sense is [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Gen, Spidey sense is just super vague anxiety, Tony is concerned, can be read as a one shot, kind of, like a lot, so Peter just misses the obvious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 18:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16770943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mauvera/pseuds/mauvera
Summary: Tony never did figure out how he came to care for the spiderkid but it happened, and now he has to deal with everything that comes with mentoring a teenage superhero who has some freaky sixth sense that only tells him that there is danger but never seems to mention when Peter is directly in it.Seriously. How did the kid not even notice that he was on fire?





	In Which Tony Is Rightfully Concerned

“Hey Mr Stark,” The kid called out. Tony ducked to avoid a blast aimed at his head. How the hell these rookies had gotten access to chitauri tech was beyond him. SHIELD had assured him after the whole Toomes shit show they were on it, but judging by the fact that the wall behind him just collapsed with one of the apparently “taken care of” weapons he figured it was entirely possible that SHIELD was just full of shit. He retaliated with a blast from his repulsors, melting the weapon in the hands of the idiot who thought it would be a good idea to shoot at Iron Man.

“Mr Stark? My Spidey-sense is going crazy right now.” Tony suppressed a sigh. _Yeah kid, it’s almost like you’re in the middle of a fight._ Actually, that was a good point. How the hell did he even know to get here? Was it his friend again? The one that had hacked Tony’s suit. Ted? Red? Fred? Yeah, it was probably Fred. Had Fred gone off and connected to FRIDAY to find out where Tony was? Oh god, did that mean Tony had to go have a word with the child? Who did they even think he was? For someone who couldn’t remember how he had even got roped into this babysitting gig, he sure had to interact with far too many teenagers.

“Mr Stark, I really think something might be wrong.”

Fine.

Tony turned to face him and halted in place immediately. He watched in abject horror as Spider-Man faced down three separate guys who were shooting at him. The only thing that stopped him dying on the spot was that they had all apparently been trained by stormtroopers, seeing as all they’d managed to hit was the giant brick wall behind the kid. Whatever small relief that fact may have given him, it was immediately, and entirely overwhelmed by the significantly more important face that the kid had a spear.

While he had no doubt that Peter would almost certainly refer to that as “totally awesome”, Tony was much more preoccupied with where that spear was, what with it being currently lodged inside of the kid’s leg. Peter somehow seemed yet to notice the weapon jammed inside his thigh but good god... _HOW?_

Before he let himself just internally combust, Tony was jolted into movement when another of the idiots aimed at the kid. So Tony decided to say 'fuck it' to his initial attempt to take these guys in without any major damage, and decided instead that the logical course of action was to just fly right into them. He crashed the Iron Man armour right into the closest of the three, a domino effect taking down the other two. Nobody could blame him if there were one or two unnecessarily broken bones.

“Woah Mr Stark that was super cool! But you’re kinda crushing that guy, you might wanna back off a bit,” Peter chirped, far too happily considering the situation.

“Kid, stop talking.”

If nothing else, Tony could be thankful that Peter trusted him enough to go against his nature and be quiet for the first time in his life. Seriously, did the kid ever stop talking? He’d kept up a conversation the entire time they’d been fighting.

“Hey uh, Mr Stark?’ Oh wow, that was almost a whole minute of silence while Tony was busy freaking out about how to address the _spear in his leg._ “Mr Stark my spidey sense is, like, going _off_ right now but I don’t know where it’s coming from, so we should probably get out of here or maybe check the perimeter. Something’s up.”

Okay, Tony could admit the kid was smart, but damn was he also a bit of a dumbass. Subtlety didn’t really seem to be the way to go in this instance.

“Kid. You got stabbed.” Peter looked blankly at him. “In your leg. Peter there is a spear in your leg.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? You, uh, feeling alright there buddy?” Tony was at a bit of a loss. What did one say to a teenager that had just gotten impaled and was so distracted by some weird sixth super-sense that he didn’t even notice? Was there a protocol for something like that? Had anyone written a guidebook? Should he?

“Yeah it’s cool,” Peter said far, far too nonchalantly and instead of reacting like a sane person, he just inspected the spear for a moment, snapped the barbed end off and just yanked it right out of his leg, hissing through his teeth.

Tony watched in horror. That was gross.

Peter however decided to just stare into the distance, realisation dawning across his face.

“Hey Mr Stark, I bet _that’s_ what my spidey sense was warning me about!”

Holy shit... this kid.

-

  
  


“Spider-Man! Behind you!” Cap’s voice rang out over the comms.

In the middle of the fight Tony felt his heart constrict at those words. Shooting one final blast from his repulsors he whirled in place, the jets at his feet pushing him higher into the sky which he was immediately grateful for because from there he could look out over the battlefield. FRIDAY was already scanning and locating Peter’s tracker directing Tony’s eyes to the small red and blue figure that was dancing away from a spray of bullets. Tony was already about to make his way over when his attention was caught by a missile headed straight for him. Damn it.

No matter how much he wanted to go over to the kid he had to focus on the immediate threat before him. He tried to stay calm, secure in the knowledge that the kid wasn’t defenceless. And judging by that small glimpse of him Tony had gotten the 'Spidey Sense' thing was still working out alright. Peter had been effectively dodging the hail of ammunition with his back turned, a trick which had never stopped being eerie. He’d seen the kid fight before like that, working on nothing but pure instinct which, yeah, was a bit impressive, but not exactly a recommended battle strategy. He used to try and encourage the kid to work in reality, back when he was still skeptical of just how much power he truly had gained from that spider.

But maybe it was alright, he thought, shooting a repulsor beam straight down the middle of a tank. Truly Hydra must be full of idiots, Tony thought, because they thought it was a genuinely good idea to stage an attack on New York with a couple of tanks and a few hundred men. As though New York wasn’t the city with the highest population of superheroes just lying around. Dumbasses. The lot of them.

His thoughts were pulled back at the sound of conversation filling up his comms.

“Hey guys something’s up,” Spider-Man said far too cheerily. Tony refused to acknowledge the heavy breath of relief he let out at the confirmation that Peter was alright.

“Spider-Man you-” Steve’s voice was full of concern. Steve was a soldier, he didn’t get concerned in the field. Shit. That meant something was wrong, and Tony was just about willing to bet half his fortune that it had something to do with Peter. When didn't it?

Tony blasted another battalion that was heading his way before he pushed off, jetting back towards the centre of the fray where his teammates resided. It didn’t take too long for him to notice the problem.

“Kid _move!”_ Clint hissed, clearly also having spotted the gigantic, obvious, _entirely unmissable_ sight of a twenty storey building toppling over. That being said, Spider-Man continued to stand there - missing it.

“No seriously guys my Spidey Sense is giving me some real vibes right now,” Peter continued to chatter. Somehow oblivious to the shattering and cracking of the building’s foundation behind him as he continued to fight earnestly. “I know you don’t think it’s real but I swear something big is about to happe-!”

Thank god the kid finally shut up. And people said Tony wasn’t grateful for the little things in life.

He would be lying though if he said his heart wasn’t still pounding, anxiety coursing through his veins as he lifted back off the ground, Peter clutched firmly in his arms.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, indignant at being carried without warning, “Mr Stark what gives? I had that guy.”

Holy shit, how did he even manage to make it so clear he was pouting when wearing that mask?

“Kid,” Tony breathed harshly, swerving midair to avoid another incoming attack but always putting himself between the bullets and Peter’s fragile, stupid body. “You ever heard of watching out? Because you nearly just got squashed like the bug you are.”

“Okay first of all, I’m an arachnid and second why would I be squ-” It was at that moment Peter’s eyes finally alighted upon the crashing avalanche of building and rubble, landing right where he had been standing moments before. “Oh…” He trailed off.

“Christ kid do me a favour and just look around for once will you?” Tony could barely contain the relief that seeped into his voice without permission. “It would be a waste of a perfectly good suit if you went and got crushed.”

Okay, so he knew no one would believe that was his only reason for caring about Peter’s incredibly imminent demise, but he had a reputation to maintain, and anyway, it was far easier to focus on literally anything other than the image he now had seared into his mind of Spider-Man oblivious to the danger that was bearing down on him, helpless to stop it.

“He alright?” Clint said shortly. Apparently some people were better than others at containing their worry for the kid but the fact he’d even asked means Clint must’ve been pretty damn stressed out. As any reasonable person is when a giant building is about to fall on a child.

“Yeah I’m cool,” Peter chirped, “Just uh, could you maybe let me down now Mr Stark? I’m kinda useless up here y’know.”

Tony ignored the few sniggers of his teammates at Tony’s overprotective nature, instead he began to sink back to the ground, carefully mapping out the least likely place for an idiotic teenage superhero to get killed by his own inattentiveness.

“Okay kid, happy trails and all that,” He said, letting Spider-Man clamber to the ground but before he could race off back to the fight Tony shot out an iron-clad hand to hold him in place a moment longer, “But if you don’t pay attention to what’s going on around you, you’re out of here. Alright?”

It was the type of question where everyone knew there was only really one right answer.

“Okay Mr Stark,” Peter said, pausing a moment before adding, “But I was totally right that something was happening.” And with a laugh he sped off, escaping both Tony’s grip and his glare.

Damn kid.

-

  


Tony was happy. Nothing terrible had happened in three days, Pepper had just come back from a business meeting in France, the Avengers hadn’t blown anything up in a while. Overall things were good. Which is perhaps why when he got an alert from FRIDAY that there was some Baby Monitor footage he should look at his mind didn’t immediately jump to the worst conclusions possible. Perhaps Peter had simply been out there helping old ladies and done something unusually heroic. Maybe FRIDAY just wanted Tony to see Peter succeed at his whole “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” schtick.

Those thoughts were immediately expelled when the footage began to play and Tony saw from Peter’s perspective that he was being held a gunpoint. Fuck.

His heart began racing immediately as he leapt from his bed. Already a suit was forming around him without him having to tear his gaze from the video. As metal encased his body he watched and heard Peter’s interactions.

“Hey guys, what’s up? Not much? That's cool. Except, ah man this is gonna be embarrassing for you, but you seem to be robbing a bank and I gotta tell you guys; that’s a lil bit illegal.”

The robbers didn’t react to Peter’s light heart conversation, their glares obvious even through the masks on their faces. Tony, for one, was too busy trying to remember to breathe to really focus on the words. Not that it particularly mattered what sort of reaction he was getting, because Peter just carried on.

“Yeah what a shame right? Turns out we can’t all just take whatever we want when it belongs to other people, because seriously guys I would have like a billion ice creams. Just, all the time. So like, I get where you’re coming from but also no. Obviously not. Seriously why did you think this was a good idea? Y’know Spider-Man is in Queens, so did you really think I’d just miss this whole bank robbery situation?”

Tony struggled to control his breathing, although the suit was carrying him as fast as possible to Peter’s location, he really couldn’t trust that the kid wouldn’t provoke someone to shooting him before Tony got a chance to get there first. Aunt Hottie would seriously not be a fan of him if he let that happen. He was halfway there, the city speeding past below him, by the time Peter tried to strike up a conversation again. Tony’s monitor told him that Peter had already incapacitated two of them, three left. Of course that was when Peter’s AI decided to inform FRIDAY that Peter was out of web fluid.

Of course he was.

“Hey, uh hold up a second, time out.” Peter said to the robbers as though criminals were generally fans of just listening to the person trying to stop them. Then again, maybe Tony severely underestimated his own approach to stopping crime because the three men paused a moment, exchanging equally confused looks with each other, similar to the one that graced Tony’s furrowed brows.

“Something doesn’t feel right.” Spider-Man declared, entirely oblivious to the three separate guns pointed right at his chest. Theoretically that suit should be bullet proof, but Tony couldn’t trust that these were everyday thugs with normal guns, because there had been an irritating resurgence of Chitauri tech popping up. But god, all he could hope was that he would get there in time.

“Hey I think maybe you should get out of here,” Peter carried on, ignorant to Tony’s anxieties, he whipped his head around the bank as though looking for a sign of what was up, “I’m getting this Spidey Sense that something is happening here right now and you guys don’t wanna get caught up in whatever this is.”

Watching through the live video feed he could see in his helmet, Tony saw Peter twirl around the space, not getting too close to the criminals to startle them into shooting him, but that didn’t mean their guns were suddenly lowered. Instead they simply kept it trained on Spider-Man who appeared to just be wandering aimlessly.

FRIDAY alerted him that Tony was only two minutes out from the robbery. He urged his suit to go faster still.

“The hell kind of tactic is this huh?” One of the criminals finally asked on the third round of Peter circling the room looking for the source of what was setting of the Spidey Sense. “You tryna intimidate me huh? Ain’t gonna work buddy, we been doin' this longer than you been alive.”

One minute until he arrived.

“Huh?” Peter questioned, ignoring the threatening and defensive way the man held his gun, cradling it to his chest like Spider-Man would try to whip it out of his hands with his webs just as he had done for the man’s companions. His other two goons lurked ominously in the background. Exchanging uncertain looks at what Spider-Man was playing at.

“You. With your freaky alien shit tryna make us ditch the cash. We got it fair and square. Well, we got it square anyway.” In a move both equally stupid and brave the man stepped forward, gesturing at Spider-Man with the barrel of his gun “Now you get outta here, let us take the money and we won’t do nothing to ya.”

Tony watched as Peter just shook his head dismissively, clearly insinuating he would not be letting the whole bank robbery situation go but still too preoccupied with his damned Spidey Sense to notice as the man shrugged and took aim.

It was thankfully right at that moment that Tony arrived, crashing through a window and jetting himself into the trigger happy man right before he could shoot Spider-Man. The blast, which by the way was definitely Chitauri tech because Tony was correct as per always, missed Peter’s face by inches. Tony careened the both of them into the wall, fortunately he just so happened to be encased in a protective metal suit of armour. The robber did not fare quite so well.

“Kid!” He shouted out when the other two men still free began firing at both the heroes, their situation having quite suddenly and explosively gone from bad to much, much worse very quickly. Although he couldn’t keep his eyes on him, struggling as he was with the gang leader in his arms, Tony trusted Peter to keep himself out of the way of the blasts that could very much kill him at any moment. Spider-Man seemed to have dissapeared when he finally turned around, knocking his guy out with a sharp hit to the temple, perhaps more harshly than necessary but it’s not like he could just let someone get away with treating Spider-Man like that. It was only harsh on principal. Not because Tony was scared at how close that had almost been or anything.

He swept his gaze across the scene; one of the goons had been knocked out by what seemed to be a kick to the head if the footprint on his face was to be trusted. The other looked positively terrified, the barrel of his gun sweeping across the room, not sure of where it’s next target would come from. Just as Tony lined up a shot with one of his non lethal ammunition to take the last one out he noticed an ominous vague shape scuttle across the ceiling. The robber had finally decided to just aim at the one opponent he could see. Mere seconds before he could pull the trigger that would’ve taken Tony out, a foot darted down from the roof, Peter kicked the man in the back of the head from his convenient perch around the light fixtures.

Tony could do little more than sigh in relief as the final man went down. The situation defused. He was about to chastise the kid for being so damn foolish when he was hushed, Peter tapping a finger to where his lips would be beneath the mask.

“Shhh… I can’t feel it.” Peter said, peering suspiciously around.

“Feel what?” Tony matched his hushed tone. Still adequately cautious of more invaders.

“My Spidey Sense is quiet. Huh.”

Tony rolled his eyes.

“Yes you idiot. You were facing down five guys with superior tech while you had no webs.”

“Oh yeah. That makes sense. Right.” Peter nodded along happily. Not at all concerned with the way Tony’s heart was just about ready to implode from the stress and anxiety coursing through his veins. “Well thanks for the help, see ya later Mr Stark!” Peter waved happily at him before running back out into the street to head home after a job well done.

Holy shit.

-

“Kid what’s wrong now?” Tony asked wearily. He was too busy trying to fix the broken stabilisers of his suit to look up, but he had spent enough time around Peter to know just by the sound of him shuffling back and forth on his feet and his breathing in heavily through his nose that something was up.

“Oh, ah, nothing? Yeah, it’s ah… nothing,” Peter said in the least convincing possible way.

Tony rolled his eyes, still not bothering to glance back at where Peter would presumably still be stumbling around in front of one of the lab desks. Normally the times Tony let him in to work on his web shooters or whatever it was the kid felt like making, they worked peacefully in relative silence. Well as silent as Peter can be, but it was good enough for Tony. Not that he would admit it, but when Peter got like that, the whole shuffling uncomfortably and not saying anything, that’s when Tony got concerned. If nothing else, his whole adventure in mentoring a teenager had taught him that they were terrible at asking for help. Well, Peter was and it’s not like Tony had many other youths just wandering around in his life, so he was probably correct in assuming the rest were the same.

“Kid, just spit it out I can hear you thinking from here.” Tony let a small smile make its way across his face while he focused on tightening a screw, never too caught up in his work to miss the way Peter would huff in that faux-irritated fashion when he got called out on badly hiding it when something was wrong. It was frankly astounding that he still had a secret identity considering how truly awful he was at lying.

“Mr Stark it’s seriously not a big deal,” Tony’s snort of disbelief seemed to finally be enough to convince Peter to just say something “Okay well fine then. You’re going to think I’m being dumb again-”

“You say that like I ever stopped.”

“Rude.” Tony could hear the smile in the kid’s voice “Whatever, I was just gonna say that I think my Spidey Sense is picking up on something. But not in the usual way,” At that Tony slowed his hands, halting his work to just listen out for if the kid was going to explain. He didn’t bother turning around because, as he had learned, the so called Spidey Sense was a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes it could very conveniently alert Peter to where danger was coming from, sometimes it would just alert him that danger existed in general and the kid would get too caught up trying to figure out _where_ it was coming from to even notice when it was right in front of him, and sometimes it was just some kind of enhanced anxiety he seemed to be cursed with. But considering they were just laying low in his lab, and Peter himself did not seem immediately concerned about anyone’s imminent death, it was most likely to have been that final variety of Spidey Sense.

“In what way is it unusual? C’mon, y’know I’m not a mindreader. Using words might just help me out a bit.”

Peter huffed a self conscious laugh. He was probably rubbing the back of his head the way he did when he made simple mistakes in front of Tony, never truly getting over the fact Actual Tony Stark was paying attention to him.

“Okay well normally Spidey Sense feels more like tingling in the back of my head that tells me when there’s danger and I’m getting that now but also its all up the back of my arm so I don’t know what that is meant to mean.”

Tony sighed, closing his eyes and spinning around on his chair to address the apparently unending weirdness that was Peter’s powers. Every time he learnt something new about them it seemed to be equally as much a revelation to Peter himself. Of course, Tony’s thoughts very quickly left his begrudging amusement at Peter’s general predicament as soon as he saw the true cause of the tingling sensation.

“Peter! You’re on fire!” He shouted, leaping from his chair the instant he noticed the flames licking up the boy’s back and arm.

Peter at first didn’t register what had just been said, too preoccupied in scrambling away in surprise at Tony’s sudden charge across the lab. Once he registered the pretty damn obvious fact Tony wasn’t going to just attack him Peter looked down to his left arm which was indeed very much aflame. For a moment he was relieved, pleased to see there was a legitimate reason behind the sudden development of his Spidey Sense.

That calm was soon interrupted by the revelation that he was _on fire._

“Holy _shit!”_ Peter hissed, waving his arm about manically as though that would be enough to quell the ever growing collection of flames that had attached themselves to him.

Tony decided right then to never be mean to his bots again because Dummy, for once in his life, did the right thing and anticipated that Tony would very much be in need of a fire extinguisher. He took it, gripping it tightly in his hand and sprayed the foam all over Peter. Mostly to get at the fire but at least part of the excess amount of spray was punishment for stressing him out with his foolishness. It’s like Peter actively wanted to see how long it would take before he did something dumb enough to give Tony a heart attack.

When the hiss of the extinguisher died out, and there was no more frantic movement by concerned men or surprised teenagers, the only sound that could be heard was Tony’s ragged breathing. He got it under control quickly enough but not before he made sure Peter noticed the glare he was sending the boy’s way. Peter just grinned sheepishly back at him.

“New lab rule,” Tony declared, “No children on fire.”

“Yeah that, uh, that seems fair,” Peter agreed amicably, probably still a bit wary of the extinguisher that Tony had not lessened his tight grip on. He was too busy being prepared for Peter to somehow spontaneously combust into flames again to notice the reproachful look he made at his now soaked shirt. Peter lifted the damp material away from him to check out the scorch marks that resided across his arms and shoulders.

“Damn, I liked this shirt,” he pouted.

“Too bad.” Tony said with zero sympathy. “You get to complain only when you don’t light yourself up. Wait, no you don’t get to complain full stop. Nobody that unknowingly does what you just did has earned the right to complain.” Tony finally lowered the fire extinguisher, satisfied that nothing too dramatic was about to happen again. “Speaking of, how the hell did you manage that? And more importantly how were you not aware?”

Peter’s bashful shuffling returned. “Well... I don’t know about the first thing. Seriously,” he added earnestly at Tony’s disbelieving look, “I literally don’t know. I didn’t mean to do it or anything. And, uh, for the second part I kind of just assumed the feeling was my Spidey Sense y’know? It made sense. They’re weirdly similar sensations.”

Tony sighed, rolling his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time, just as he normally did anytime he spent an extended period of time with the kid. How did one child even manage to get himself in so many ludicrous situations?

“Alright go clean yourself up kid, and do me a favour just for the sake of my general health and just… don’t do that again.” He didn’t think it was all that necessary to address the sudden surging of feelings that had occured when he saw Peter in danger. Considering the fact Tony was allergic to anything that resembled proper emotions it was somewhat concerning how much he felt every time he saw Peter throw himself in harm’s way. And as he had just learnt apparently he also had strong feelings toward Peter just being a threat to himself.

Vaguely some part of him wondered if he would ever get over those stressful feelings of care and worry about Peter, but as he watched the boy trip over his own feet on his way out of the door and Tony naturally lent forward to give him a hand, he figured that no, he probably wouldn’t be getting over them any time soon.


End file.
